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SPIN Selling seminar
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SPIN-selling.md

SPIN Selling seminar

Agenda

  • Sale and buying cycles
  • Implied vs explicit needs
  • SPIN
  • Demo capab
  • Obtaining commitment
  • Preventing objections
  • Devel new skills

Traditional Sales Cycle

  • Planning phase (who to target)
  • Prospect (find people to sell to)
  • Opening (come up with something he wants to hear)
  • Investigation (what they need)
  • Demo (present products and services)
  • Obtaining commitment (closing)
  • Following-up (start again)

Traditional Buying Cycle

  • Changes over time lead to problems
  • Recognition of needs
  • Evaluation of options
  • Resolution of concerns
  • Decision
  • Implementation

4 stages of sales call according to SPIN:

  • Opening: prelim, purpose, permission to proceed (promise them only 4 minutes)
  • Investigation:
  • most important stage
  • implied vs explicit needs
  • Demo
  • present, describe Features, Advantages, Benefits
  • Main source of objection in complex sales
  • Closing
  • check key concerns, summarize benefits, propose realistic commitment

Development of needs

  • IMPLIED NEEDS
  • Unknown (Problems, Difficulties, Dissatisfaction)
  • OK for simple "transactional" selling
  • EXPLICIT NEEDS
  • ... (Needs, desires, wishes)
  • required for complex "consultative" sales

SPIN (Situation, Problem, Impolication, Needs-payoff)

Situation questions

  • facts, background, ...
  • waste customers time, so do research in advance
  • should be targeted to customer problems

Problem questions

  • probe difficulties, prompt for implied needs
  • great interest to the customer (his problems!)
  • plan these ahead of time, to ensure they're covered; get 3+ with follow-up Qs
  • AREAS: cost, revenue, efficiency, morale, image/reputation, reliability/performance, customers, innovation, ease-of-use
  • taylor these questions to your audience (don't ask CEO about ease-of-use)

Implication questions

  • Find related problems from perceived problems (your ease-of-use issues are losing customers)
  • develop implied need to other problems
  • IMPORTANT
  • B.O.T.C.H.:
  • Backlog/bottleneck (efficiency) ("Does it affect other tasks?")
  • Other people ("Who else than you is affected by this??")
  • Time (needed, waster, lost)
  • Cost associated with problems
  • Hassles (morale/training/turnover/unhappyness)

Need-payoff questions

  • develop desire, promise solution
  • don't ask this too early, first develop the problem (else rouse suspicion)
  • develop from implied need to explicit need
  • encourage buyer to talk about benefit from transaction..
  • I.C.E. (Identify, Clarify, Expand) (Also useful for Problem questions)
  • ask closed (leading) ended question to IDENTIFY explicit need (useful for prompting, in the next phase)
  • ask open & closed questions to CLARIFY the explicit need
  • ask open & closed questions to EXPAND on the long-term benefits of your solution

Demos

  • of FEATURES (&, price, accessories); low impact
  • of ADVANTAGES (linked to features); sufficient impact
  • of BENEFITS (solutions to explicit needs); high impact (during complex sales)

Buyer's reactions

  • Features => COST objection
  • Advantages => question the VALUE of these advantages
  • Benefits => no problems

Closing questions

  • Win or lose, but this works better for simple, transaction sales; no revenue risks
  • In complex sale: Advance (next step), Continuation (repeat later)

Always Be Closing

  • Opening: plan realistic advance and plan B
  • Investigating: keep closing strategy in mind!
  • Demo: show benefits for closing.

3 Steps to Closing

  • check that concerns are resolved,
  • summarize the benefits
  • propose a realistic commitment (advance)

Managing vs Preventing Objections

  • Typical flow: Advantages => Objection => Management of objections
  • Better: ask need-payoff questions, learn needs, offer benefits, no objections

How to apply new skills efficiently?

  • Practice one skill at a time.
  • Practice at least 3 times
  • quantity before quality
  • secure situations

What to do

  • Study: listen to charlie rose, larry king, caesar milan
  • Do homework, validate information without boring
  • Know your industry, company, competition
  • Prepare a lot of questions, don't underestimate length of sales call
  • Lead questions that show your advantages relative your competitions
  • Plant "bombs", prepping your customer to be resistant to your competitors
  • SWOT
  • Be aware of hurtful questions (painful)
  • Never assume, always confirm
  • Practice new skills
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